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Copenhagen (play)
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Copenhagen is a play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It debuted in London in 1998. Within the National Theatre in London, it ran for more than 300 performances, starring David Burke (Niels Bohr), Sara Kestelman (Margrethe Bohr), and Mattew Marsh (Werner Heisenberg). It opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on April 11, 2000 and ran for 326 performances.
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Copenhagen is a play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It debuted in London in 1998. Within the National Theatre in London, it ran for more than 300 performances, starring David Burke (Niels Bohr), Sara Kestelman (Margrethe Bohr), and Mattew Marsh (Werner Heisenberg). It opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on April 11, 2000 and ran for 326 performances. Directed by Michael Blakemore, it starred Philip Bosco (Niels Bohr), Michael Cumpsty (Werner Heisenberg), and Blair Brown (Margrethe Bohr). It won the Tony Award for Best Play, Best Featured Actress in a Play, (Blair Brown), and Best Direction of a Play (Michael Blakemore).
Contextual Overview
The play, a fictional dialogue in itself, is based upon real historical figures and actual events:
In 1924, Heisenberg (German) went to Copenhagen, where he lived and worked as a collaborator with the older Bohr on quantum theories. Over their three years together, they developed such revolutionary ideas as Complementarity and the Uncertainty Principle.
By 1941, in the heat of World War Two, Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, which put Bohr, a half-Jewish quantum and nuclear physicist, in particular danger and restricted his research. At the time, Heisenberg was working for Germany, heading an effort to develop atomic energy for practical purposes, (purposes which may have included an atomic bomb). However, despite the danger posed between the two parties and the fact that they were enemies by virtue of heir nationality, Heisenberg returned to Copenhagen, to the house of Bohr, in September of that year, where they had a conversation which remains—for the most part—a mystery. The only item which is generally agreed upon is that, at some point during their meeting, the two men departed the household to go for a walk, most likely out of fear of being overheard by the Gestapo. It is also likely that over the course of this brief exchange, that one or both parties was terribly offended; after this single event, Bohr and Heisenberg never again displayed the same kind of friendship or camaraderie.
Werner Heisenberg returned once more to Copenhagen and the house of Bohr in 1947, after the war had ended, after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after his homeland had once again been decimated in the wake of a terrible war.
Considering that this particular drama deals with real people who are now dead, none of their scripted dialogues can be proven entirely accurate; among a few other anecdotes and extensive writings on and by both men, the only thing that Frayn can know with certainty (he admits) is that they met in Copenhagen in those years. “This is where my play departs from the historical record, by supposing that at some later time, when everyone argues the question out further, until they had achieved a little more understanding of what was going on, just as they had so many times when they were alive with the intractable difficulties presented by the internal workings of the atom.”
(See section "Historical Debate" below for further information regarding the historical and scientific foundations of Copenhagen.)
Plot Synopsis
Heisenberg – “…No one understands my trip to Copenhagen. Time and time again I’ve explained it. To Bohr himself, and Margrethe. To interrogators and intelligence officers, to journalists and historians. The more I’ve explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become. Well, I shall be happy to make one more attempt.”
Three characters, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Bohr’s wife Margrethe, attempt to answer the major dramatic question of the piece which Margrethe poses in the first line of the play: She asks, “Why did he [Heisenberg] come to Copenhagen ?” They spend the remainder of the two-act drama presenting, debating, and rejecting theories that may answer that question.
Along the way, Heisenberg and Bohr “draft” several versions of their 1941 exchange, arguing about the ramifications of each potential version of their meeting and the motives behind it. They discuss the idea of nuclear power and control thereof, the rationale behind building or not building an atomic bomb, the uncertainty of the past and the inevitability of the future, all in scope of themselves acting as particles, drifting through the atom that is Copenhagen.
Plot Analysis
Unlike most conventional plays, Frayn’s Copenhagen does not occur in real time and space. Instead, it happens in some ethereal, possibly “afterlife” domain, in which the only three characters attempt to recall and discuss what happened during Bohr and Heisenberg’s meeting in 1941. For this reason, the characters’ major collective goal is simply to determine what transpired. This does not lend to a common protagonist, antagonist or even significant conflict, seeing as the characters now have nothing to lose. The character Heisenberg actually tells the audience, “Now we’re all dead and gone. Now no one can be hurt .” Because there is no specific “hero” to follow, Copenhagen’s plot is likewise atypical of the theatrical norm.
According to David Rush, plot “refers to the selection and arrangement of the incidents ” in a story, or “how the story is told .” As mentioned before, there are three major events, or incidents, presented within the drama: 1) Heisenberg, having just completed his doctorate, comes to Copenhagen in 1924 in order to research quantum mechanics with Niels Bohr. 2) Heisenberg goes to Copenhagen to visit Bohr, and they have a discussion which jeopardizes their friendship. 3) Heisenberg, citizen of a defeated nation, returns to Copenhagen to readdress the issues that had come up in their previous encounter, “in order to establish some agreed version of the meeting .” Of course, none of these events actually transpire onstage; they have already happened to the characters, who are merely looking back on them.
The arrangement of the events is as follows: They discuss, in detail, the controversial 1941 meeting in the opening act. Then, in act two, the origins of their friendship in 1924, and finally the aftermath of the war and their friendship in 1947. There are no scene breaks; the second act picks up exactly where the first left off. The whole of the show is a single seamless conversation.
Structure
Generally, readers and audiences expect a Freytag's Triangle where structure is concerned, beginning with the exposition that portrays a state of equilibrium, leading into an inciting incident, rising action, an eventual climax with a reversal and recognition, and finally resolution that amounts to a new state of equilibrium . However, without a definite protagonist or direct conflict, Copenhagen does not follow the traditional story-arch. Instead, the steps are intermixed throughout.
• Exposition: Due to the subject matter, much of the play is explanation and exposition, which gradually establishes both the past lives of the characters in question and the scientific principles on which the story is based. A reviewer from Time Magazine actually criticized the play’s Broadway on the grounds that “Frayn's dialogue is heavy with exposition, both dramatic and scientific .”
• Inciting Incident: In most conventional dramas, the inciting incident takes place during the play. In Copenhagen, the inciting incident was an unsettling conversation between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941, long before the characters are “dead and gone.” The Major Dramatic Question, which attempts to analyze and explore this encounter is raised in the first line, but has also been raised over and over since 1941.
• Rising Action: The action rises and falls multiple times, with each new theory, each new argument, and each new resolution of the theory. There is no single steady build, and, as a result, no final climax.
• Climax: With each new theory raised and each heated argument, the characters reach a new climax. The last climax reached is definitely the highest in the piece, but it does not totally resolve the Major Dramatic Question.
• Resolution: At the close of the drama, there is no new state of equilibrium. Some theories have been posed, some issues resolved, but neither Bohr nor Heisenberg have entirely settled on what exactly transpired that September evening in 1941. Heisenberg closes the play, calling the conversation “some event that will never quite be located or defined…that final core of uncertainty at the heart of things .”
Character Guide
In most dramatic works where the characters are based on real people, there is a point at which the character deviates from the real person. Michael Frayn works to keep this distinction as small as possible. Having studied memoirs and letters and other historical records of the two physicists, Frayn feels confident in claiming that “The actual words spoken by [the] characters are entirely their own .” With that in mind, the character descriptions apply to both the representative characters as well as the physicists themselves. There is a great amount known about all of the primary characters presented in Copenhagen; the following includes those bits of information which are directly relevant and referenced in the work itself.
• Werner Heisenberg was born in 1901 in Würzburg, Germany. The son of a university professor, Heisenberg grew up in with an intense emphasis on academics, but was exposed to the destruction that World War I dealt to Germany at a rather young age. He married Elisabeth Schumacher, (also the daughter of a professor), and they had seven children. He received his doctorate in 1923 from the physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, and went to Copenhagen to study quantum mechanics with Niels Bohr in 1924, (when he was 22), and replaced Bohr’s assistant, H. A. Kramers. In 1926, The University of Leipzig offered him the opportunity to become Germany’s youngest full professor. Heisenberg is best known for his “Uncertainty Principle,” (translated from the German Ungenauigkeit [inexactness] or Unschärfe [lack of sharpness] Relation, which was later changed to Unbestimmtheit meaning “indeterminate.”) In 1927, he and Bohr presented the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. During the Second World War, Heisenberg worked for Germany, researching atomic technology and heading their nuclear reactor program. After the war, his involvement with the Nazi’s earned him certain notoriety in the world of physicists, mainly due to the fact that he could have given Hitler the means to produce and use nuclear arms. He continued his research until his death in 1976 in Münich.
• Niels Bohr was born in 1885, making him 38 when Heisenberg first came to work with him. He married Margrethe Norlund in 1912 in Copenhagen and together they had six sons, two of whom died. Harry Lustig notes his biographies that “Most of the world's great theoretical physicists…spent periods of their lives at Bohr's Institute .” For this reason, along with some fairly fundamental theories on quantum mechanics, Bohr was referred to as “The Pope,” (a title which Heisenberg actually uses in the play.) Before the war, his research was instrumental in nuclear research, some of which led to the building of the bomb. During the war, however, Bohr was living in occupied Denmark and somewhat restricted in his research; he evacuated Denmark in 1943, just before an SS sweep which would have incriminated him on his Jewish heritage. In America, he worked in Los Alamos on the atomic bomb until the end of the war. He died in 1962 and was survived by his wife, Margrethe.
• Margrethe Bohr, known later in her live as Dronning or “Queen” Margrethe, was born in 1890 in Denmark. She was closely involved in her husband’s work; he would commonly bounce ideas off of her, trying to explain them in “plain language.” She died in 1984, survived by several of her children. Her son Hans wrote, “…My mother was the natural and indispensable center. Father knew how much mother meant to him and never missed an opportunity to show his gratitude and love...Her opinions were his guidelines in daily affairs,” and this relationship shows on in Michael Frayn’s dialogue.
(Much of the above is accredited to "Biographies of Persons in Copenhagen," Compiled by Harry Lustig.)
Character Analysis
As in many plays, the characters of Frayn’s Copenhagen are not just participants in the action, but serve specific functions, most essential of which is as particles interacting within an atom. (See the section on Spectacle below for further detail.) Margrethe remains largely stationary, like the nucleus, while Bohr and Heisenberg move about during their argument, acting respectively as a native electron of the atom, and as a foreign photon.
More specifically, there is a distinct father-son relationship between the parties Bohr and Heisenberg, with Heisenberg looking up to the older physicist for advice and approval, and at times rebelling from his “father’s” wishes. His relationship plays with the concept of a legacy (in one’s work and one’s research). To illustrate the above, Heisenberg actually calls Bohr a “father confessor” and alludes to him as the “spiritual father” of the quantum physics world . In most father-son relationships, the son does eventually eclipse the father, as Heisenberg attempts to do in their debates over Uncertainty and Complementarity; he succeeds in 1926 when he is offered a job at Leipzig as a professor.
Bohr and Heisenberg actually act as foils to one another. According to David Rush, the foil “compares and contrasts with another,” in that their traits are more noticeable and more pronounced because they are observed in reference to someone who is their opposite . Bohr is considered slow and calculating, while Heisenberg is presented as moving too quickly, always driving forward. Margrethe (in the play) announces that Heisenberg goes “too fast for anyone to see where he is ” whereas Bohr is supposed to be slower and calculating.
There is a hierarchical structure between the three and the manner in which they appeal to one another. Heisenberg addresses Bohr as a confidant, and Bohr regards Margrethe in the same manner. (The Confidant being the individual in whom the character confides .)
Though all of the characters are supposed to very closely resemble their historical lives, Frayn admits that he changed Bohr to make him easier to understand and relate to. Bohr was apparently “notorious for his inarticulacy and inaudibility ,” traits which do not work on stage. Also, a letter written by Bohr found its way into print after the play was already published; it detailed certain opinions of Heisenberg that appeared rather embittered. With this new Frayn consents “that the real Bohr remained much angrier for much longer than my [Frayn’s] character .”
Frayn makes no such amendments to his presentations of his other characters. He avidly defends his presentation of Heisenberg and his motives in his Post-Postscript, but that did not alleviate the criticisms he faced. Upon seeing the performance in New York, Heisenberg’s own son told Frayn, “Your Heisenberg is nothing like my father. I never saw my father express emotion about anything except music. But I understand that the characters in a play have to be rather more forthcoming than that .”
Genre
Copenhagen cannot be labeled simply as a comedy or tragedy; the lack of a protagonist and direct conflict prevents this in large part. David Rush explores a sub-genre of theatre, a later hybrid form known as “drama,” which he describes as a piece which cannot be specifically categorized as a tragedy, but which he notes involves “serious people going about serious business in a serious way .” Seeing as the characters in Copenhagen are already dead, they cannot suffer any tragic fall; though there is definite wit in the arguments, it is taken in a very serious light seeing as it regards subjects like war, fear and nuclear arms. It is most nearly a “drama,” but works in many ways as an expository piece in the manner it presents information to the audience.
Style
Given that the characters do talk directly to the audience, acting as narrators, the play can be considered a “presentational piece,” which presents an interpretive version of the story as opposed to “representing” an objective reality .
The construction of the plot is non-linear, seeing as it does not exist in time and space. Sometimes one character will not notice that there are other people in the space, and speak as if to no one. The world that Frayn presents is outside of our conceptions as audience members, simply by virtue of the fact that no one attending the play has ever died. So the world in which Copenhagen is based is somewhere between heaven and an atom.
It can also be thought to exist “inside the heads” of the characters present. It is a subjective world, taking and manipulating history, picking apart some events and mashing others together to better compare them. The characters are all plagued by some form of guilt or another, particularly in reference to the atomic bomb, and they are trapped in this world, doomed to forever speculate on that evening in Copenhagen in 1941 to determine how the world may have been changed. These are all traits of the artistic style known as Expressionism .
In prefacing a piece of expressionist writing, August Strindberg notes that in these worlds, “everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. Working with…real events as a background, the imagination spins out its threads of thoughts and weaves them into new patterns .” Copenhagen is an embodiment of these principles.
Themes
Very simply, Copenhagen regards the possibility, power, control, and fear of nuclear power and nuclear weaponry. Frayn’s drama does not present these themes in so accessible a format. Instead, he uses concepts in physics and the lives of the characters to act as reoccurring and controlling metaphors which best explain the themes and ideas that influenced the meeting in Copenhagen, September 1941.
• Uncertainty – Based on Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle, which states that one can never know the exact location and momentum of a particle at a given time, because the moment one tries to measure and observe a particle, one has manipulated and changed that particle. An obvious connection follows that the entire play is based on a question, and even by the end, none of the characters can be entirely certain of what transpired. On the more complicated end, Heisenberg talks about a desire to know what was going on in Bohr’s mind, that he needed to know precisely what Bohr knew about the Allied Nuclear Program and their progress; by virtue of his coming to Copenhagen and interacting with Bohr, he has changed Bohr’s exact thoughts, so he can never quite know with certainty his fellow physicist’s intent .
• Complementarity – A concept which Bohr used in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, explaining that one could not understand the nature of an electron unless he could observe both its wave and particle form. Essentially, it is the idea of being or embodying two things at once. This is alluded to throughout, but comes to the forefront most explicitly when Heisenberg discusses his contradicting states when he went to Copenhagen in 1941: “I’m your enemy; I’m also your friend. I’m a danger to mankind; I’m also your guest. I’m a particle; I’m also a wave .”
• Control rods – There is much to be said about the nature and issue of control in this play, and it comes out most commonly in reference to a nuclear generator Heisenberg was building in Germany during the war. Bohr scolds Heisenberg telling him that the reaction “not self-limiting, if they let it, it would have gone critical, and melted down …” because Heisenberg was lacking the proper cadmium control rods which could be used to slow a fission reaction. Over the course of the play, Bohr and Heisenberg debate the degree of choice and control they had over the creation of the nuclear bomb as well. Likewise, the lack of control of the reaction refers to their conversation as well; Margrethe justifies a mean-spirited outburst by claiming that “one truth leads to two more” and so on with no control rods to stop it.
• Uranium 235 – Uranium has two isotopes, 238 which is not fissionable, and 235 which is but makes up less that one percent of natural uranium. Uranium 235 is used to explore this idea of chain reactions, and the significance of its fissionability is readdressed countless times during the play.
• Particles in space – The staging itself is supposed to be representative of an atom, and the characters “drift through space.” This nature of particle behavior refers to the central characters, but is also discussed in terms of the physicists studying quantum mechanics: certain physicists like Bohr made up the nucleus of the atom in Copenhagen while others (Born, Jordan, Shrodinger, etc.) acted as “electrons” floating about the outside in Germany, Zurich, Russia, etc .
• Conclusions through Dialogue – Through his memoirs, Heisenberg states his intention “to demonstrate that science is rooted in conversations .” The whole of the play is a discussion, (at times an argument), and deals with concepts in physics and mathematics; Frayn uses the play to try to blur the lines between “science” as academia and general human interaction. During one heated foray, Frayn’s Heisenberg declares that “mathematics is sense; what something means in math is what it means .”
Fear and regret speak for themselves in most pieces that regard nuclear weaponry, and they are likewise present in Frayn’s Copenhagen.
Several other themes that arise consist of certain conflicting dualities, such as Speed vs. Steadiness, Toy vs. Weapon, Action vs. Reaction, Plain Language vs. Scientific, and Physics vs. Politics. All of these reoccurring threads are explored in both their states, showing in many cases that both can happen simultaneously, and once again presenting complementarity.
Reoccuring Images and Motifs
Because the concepts in physics and politics are at times very complicated or very abstract, Frayn uses several controlling images to better relate certain ideas to his audience.
• Skiing and Table-Tennis – These two activities are referred to as a pastime of Bohr and Heisenberg’s, and both demonstrate the competition between the two (representative o national competition.) They are also used to suggest Heisenberg’s speed and recklessness which contrasts Bohr’s caution and tediousness .
• Invisible Straight – An anecdote in which Bohr managed to bluff himself in a game of poker by betting on a straight that he thought he had, but he really did not . This principle is applied to nuclear weaponry, suggesting that nations will act differently when they think that an opponent can produce nuclear arms, whether or not the opponent can.
• Cap-Pistols, Land Mines and Nuclear Reactors – These fall into the Toy vs. Weapon theme and once again presents anecdotes of Bohr and Heisenberg’s lives. Their fascination in playing with the new toy blinds them to the danger that it poses.
• Bomb – The term “bomb” appears as a literal looming image in many cases, but it is used figuratively in a couple of instances, as if it should be a joke, but with such grave implications that it cannot be found funny. (In example, Heisenberg refers to a “bomb having gone off” in Bohr’s head .)
• Christian Reaching for the Life-Buoy – Christian was one of Bohr’s sons, who tragically drowned while he and Bohr were out sailing . The phrase “Christian reaches for the life-buoy” appears several times during the play, and every time, the characters seem to hold their breath in the hope that this time, Christian will survive. Bohr had concluded that they would have both drowned had he jumped in to save his son, and this presents an idea of futile heroics, particularly with reference to Heisenberg and what should happen if he were to resist Hitler’s rule .
• “Another Draft” – Whenever the characters conclude that an interpretation of their 1941 meeting is incorrect, they call for “another draft.”
Language
Though the dialogue does not contradict logic, it cannot be called realistic in the strictest sense. One character’s line might fade into the next, as though the second person knew exactly what he was going to say; sometimes a character will slip into a memory and partially relive a former or younger self in a monologue; and over the course of the show, there is a definite ambiguity as to whether they are speaking to one another or to the audience.
The play was originally written in English, but the real people in the exchange may have had this conversation in Danish or German. But even with translation in mind, Frayn defends that the words in the script are those that the characters would actually say. In his post-script, he writes, “If this needs any justification, I can only appeal to Heisenberg himself .” Understandably, Frayn needs to present the characters in an interesting and dramatic light, as well as depicting a setting that no living person has visited, so the accuracy of such dialogue is subject to dwindle by degrees.
Plain language and scientific language both operate in this play. There are several instances when the two physicists start speaking too scientifically for many people to understand, and one of them will remark that they must revert to plain language, to explain it in a way that Margrethe will understand. Even for this effort though, criticism arose about the complexity of the play and the difficulty for viewers to comprehend. A writer for The Commonweal commented on the Broadway Premier, saying that “the play’s relentless cerebral forays can…be frustrating .”
Spectacle
Copenhagen was originally concepted in “the round,” and Michael Blakemore’s premiering production honors this intention. As mentioned before, it was supposed to depict “an atom” with the characters behaving as its components. As of such, the stage was intentionally bare, excluding three chairs and the three characters. Margrethe, acting as the nucleus would likely spend most—if not all—of the play, seated on her chair in the middle of the stage. Bohr was supposed to act as an electron, free to roam about the space, and Heisenberg was a photon, an intruder particle, who was only in this atom for the time being .
One peculiarity of Copenhagen is that it includes no stage direction. Never does it indicate a gesture or movement of a character; rather it only communicates the words that the character is saying. Because it is one single conversation, there are no exits, no entrances, and constant dialogue which periodically breaks the fourth wall.
All stills of production show the characters in moderate formal wear, (suits and ties, etc.), and give the impression of lower lighting. Essentially, all of the emphasis in Copenhagen is put on the words that are being said, and the audience is not distracted by a flashy set or bizarre costumes.
Rhythm and Pacing
Copenhagen is a conversation. It supports interruptions and common repetitions, but no breaks indicated by the author himself. With no stage direction, there is no indication of pauses. Instead, one of the characters, usually Margrethe will say, “Silence,” and break the silence in doing so.
There are many long monologues in the piece, used to explain difficult and complex concepts, but there are also stretches of very short lines which also model themselves as explanations, but with the two physicists switching off every sentence.
In some places, Bohr and Heisenberg present a banter that is not unlike their table-tennis games: one man makes a comment, and the other bats it back at him, often using similar syntax or even returning the identical phrase. In this manner, they compound upon one another’s words, building with each new volley, until the point is made with a longer explanation, an explanation that the other party can no longer bat back.
Physicists Referenced
Over the course of the play, several renowned physicists are referenced. Many of them are referred to in the context of their work with either Bohr or Heisenberg. This is the order they appear in the script:
• Max Born
• Pascual Jordan
• Carl von Weizsacker
• Rozental Petersen
• Christian Moller
• Samuel Goudsmit
• Albert Einstein
• Wolfgang Pauli
• Otto Frisch
• Lise Meitner
• Arnold Sommerfeld, Max von Laue, and Karl Wirtz
• Otto Hahn – credited with the discovery of fission
• Fritz Strassmann
• Enrico Fermi
• John Wheeler
• Robert Oppenheimer
• Erwin Schrodinger
• Henrik Casimir
• George Gamow
• Oscar Klein
• James Chadwick
• Victor Weisskopf
• Fritz Houtermanns
• Edward Teller
• Leo Szilard
• Paul Dirac
• H.A. Kramers
• George Uhlenbeck
• Rudolph Peierls
Historical debate
The meeting took place in September 1941 when Bohr and Heisenberg were 55 and 39 respectively. Heisenberg had worked with Bohr in Copenhagen for several years starting in 1924.
Heisenberg historians remain divided over their own interpretations of the event, and the 1998 play put more attention on what had been a previously primarily scholarly discussion. A collection of historical essays provoked by the play was published in English in 2005.
Much of the initial "controversy" resulted from a 1956 letter Heisenberg sent to the journalist Robert Jungk after reading the German edition of Jungk's book Brighter than a Thousand Suns (1956). In the letter, Heisenberg described how he had come to Copenhagen to discuss with Bohr his moral objections toward scientists working on nuclear weapons, but how he had failed to articulate this clearly before the conversation came to a halt. Jungk published an extract from the letter in the Danish edition of the book in 1956 which, out of context, made it look as if Heisenberg was claiming to have purposely derailed the German bomb project on moral grounds. (The letter's whole text shows Heisenberg was careful not to claim this.) Bohr was outraged after reading this extract in his copy of the book, feeling that this was false and that the 1941 meeting had proven to him that Heisenberg was quite happy with producing nuclear weapons for Germany.
After the play inspired numerous scholarly and media debates over the 1941 meeting, the
in Copenhagen released to the public all heretofore sealed documents related to the meeting, a move intended mostly to settle historical arguments over what they contained.
Among the documents were the unsent letters Bohr drafted to Heisenberg in 1957 about Jungk's book and other topics. .
These drafts proved to be significant in several respects. First, they proved to be relatively consistent with Heisenberg's own recollections of the meeting given to Jungk in 1956, meaning that the course of the conversation can now be fairly well established. Both Bohr and Heisenberg agree that Heisenberg started the visit by stating to Bohr that nuclear weapons were now conceivable. As Heisenberg wrote to Jungk, "This talk probably started with my question as to whether or not it was right for physicists to devote themselves in wartime to the uranium problem -- as there was the possibility that progress in this sphere could lead to grave consequences in the technique of the war." Bohr confirms this by writing "It had to make a very strong impression on me that at the very outset you stated that you felt certain that the war, if it lasted sufficiently long, would be decided with atomic weapons."
Heisenberg repeated his convictions on the technical feasibility of building nuclear weapons. As Heisenberg recalled: He [Bohr] replied as far as I can remember with a counter-question, "Do you really think that uranium fission could be utilized for the construction of weapons?" I may have replied: "I know that this is in principle possible, but it would require a terrific technical effort, which, one can only hope, cannot be realized in this war. Bohr was shocked by my reply" Bohr's draft letters are consistent with this: "I did not respond to this at all, but as you perhaps regarded this as an expression of doubt, you related how in the preceding years you had devoted yourself almost exclusively to the question and were quite certain that it could be done," [This point is of interest, because it is at odds with the view of some that Heisenberg's miscalculations had led him to conclude, erroneously, that atomic weapons were not feasible.] According to Bohr's later notes, Heisenberg then told Bohr that he had not come to discuss the technical aspects of the potential weapons:
Heisenberg said explicitly that he did not wish to enter into technical details but that Bohr should understand that he knew what he was talking about as he had spent 2 years working exclusively on this question.
Unfortunately, because of Heisenberg's concerns about being monitored -- his discussion of any aspects of the nuclear efforts to someone in an occupied country would have been illegal -- his discussion was cryptic. Indeed, Bohr's letters note that Heisenberg spoke "in vague terms" from which Bohr was only able to get an "impression" about Heisenberg's efforts.
Bohr wrote of this:
I listened to this without speaking since [a] great matter for mankind was at issue in which, despite our personal friendship, we had to be regarded as representatives of two
sides engaged in mortal combat. That my silence and gravity, as you write in the letter, could be taken as an expression of shock at your reports that it was possible to make an atomic bomb is a quite peculiar misunderstanding, which must be due to the great tension in your own mind. From the day three years earlier when I realized that slow neutrons could only cause fission in Uranium 235 and not 238, it was of course obvious to me that a bomb with certain effect could be produced by separating the uraniums. In June 1939 I had even given a public lecture in Birmingham about uranium fission, where I talked about the effects of such a bomb but of course added that the technical preparations would be so large that one did not know how soon they could be overcome. If anything in my behaviour could be interpreted as shock, it did not derive from such reports but rather from the news, as I had to understand it, that Germany was participating vigorously in a race to be the first with atomic weapons.
This circumspect discussion, combined with Bohr's shocked reaction to it, apparently cut off the discussion between the two. Thus, the Bohr letters cannot resolve the question, posed by the Copenhagen play, of what Heisenberg had wanted -- but failed -- to convey to Bohr.
The Bohr letters are significant here, because they do eliminate some of the more sinister motives that had been postulated. For example, in a 1998 book, Heisenberg and the Nazi atomic bomb project: a study in German culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Paul Lawrence Rose had speculated that Heisenberg had visited Bohr as "an intelligence-gathering mission." However, the release of Bohr's letters disprove that claim, showing that Heisenberg had not come to elicit information from Bohr, and did not even want to discuss the technical issues of building a bomb:
Heisenberg said explicitly that he did not wish to enter into technical details but that Bohr should understand that he knew what he was talking about as he had spent 2 years working exclusively on this question.
This shows that Heisenberg wanted to move the discussion into another area of nuclear weapons, not the technology. This passage also appears to counter the arguments of some Heisenberg critics (such as Rose and Bernstein) that Heisenberg's errors in 1940 had mistakenly led him to conclude that building nuclear weapons was not possible.
Finally, the 1957 Bohr draft letters, written 16 years after the meeting itself, suggest a conflict between Bohr and Heisenberg. However, Heisenberg's own letter to his wife, written on the eve of his departure from Copenhagen, provides no hint of a fracture. In it, he related his final evening with Bohr as very pleasant and unremarkable: "Today I was once more, with Weizsaecker, at Bohr's. In many ways this was especially nice, the conversation revolved for a large part of the evening around purely human concerns, Bohr was reading aloud, I played a Mozart Sonata (a-Major)."
In a March 2006 interview Ivan Supek, one of Heisenberg's students and friends, commented that "Copenhagen is a bad play" and that "Frayn mixed up some things". Supek also claimed that actually Weizsäcker was the main figure of the meeting. Allegedly, "Heisenberg and Weizsäcker came to Bohr wearing German army uniforms. Weizsäcker tried to persuade Bohr to mediate for peace between Great Britain and Germany and Heisenberg practically completely relied on his political judgement". Supek received these details in a confidential conversation with Margrethe who thought he would never make them public. Supek however felt it was "his duty to announce these facts so that future generations can know the truth about the Bohr - Heisenberg meeting".
Supek's statements about Bohr's recollection of "the Bohr - Heisenberg meeting" itself mixes up the visit, and in so doing, suggests the reason why the meeting did not achieve its purpose. Because Heisenberg could only visit Bohr in occupied Denmark through, and on behalf of the German government, Heisenberg was obligated to make public lectures on behalf of the Government, that were monitored by German government officials. Heisenberg, however, had hoped to convey his concerns later, during private discussions with Bohr, away from monitors. Heisenberg's contemporaneous letters to his wife, and later correspondence with Jungkt place the private conversation on Wednesday evening during a walk at Bohr's house, outside the presence of Weizsäcker. ("This talk then took place on an evening walk in the city district near Ny-Carlsberg,") ("Late at night I walked under a clear and starry sky through the city, darkened, to Bohr."). That Supek stated that Margrethe believed that Weizsäcker was present -- and that Bohr himself recalled this private meeting as taking place "in my room at the Institute" , where Heisenberg and Weizsäcker had made their public statements -- may suggest that Bohr blurred two events, and did not distinguish between the public statements Heisenberg made and the private message Heisenberg hoped to convey to Bohr in private later that evening at Bohr's house.
Sample Production History
London Premier – 1998
Copenhagen opened in the National Theatre in London and ran for more than 300 performances, starring David Burke as Niels Bohr, Sara Kestelman as Margrethe Bohr, and Mattew Marsh as Werner Heisenberg. It was directed by Michael Blakemore.
Broadway Opening – April 2000
Continuing under the direction of Michael Blakemore, it opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on April 11 and ran for 326 performances. Starring Philip Bosco as Bohr, Michael Cumpsty as Heisenberg and Blair Brown as Margrethe, it went on to when the Tony Award for Best Play, along with two others for Best Featured Actress in a Play, (Blair Brown), and Best Direction of a Play (Michael Blakemore). But even for its success, Frayn admitted in an article that “A number of commentators expressed misgivings about the whole enterprise .” Several critics noted that it was heavy with scientific dialogue, a little too heavy for the common audience. Though a writer from Physics World hailed it as “brilliant theatre ,” a Charles Spencer, of the from the Daily Telegraph, wrote, “I felt that my brain was being stretched to breaking point -- well beyond breaking point, in fact .”
TV Movie – 2002
The play was adapted as a television movie in 2002, with Daniel Craig as Heisenberg, Stephen Rea as Niels Bohr, and Francesca Annis as Margrethe Bohr. The movie substantially cuts down the script of the play, eliminating several recurring themes, and most of the material that established the community of scientists in Copenhagen. It also abandons the abstract staging of the theatrical version in favor of being set in the city of Copenhagen, in Bohr's old house.
Author Information
Michael Frayn, an English playwright and novelist, was born September 8th, 1933 in London. He was educated in England, studying Philosophy at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, and eventually marrying the biographer Claire Tomalin. Apart from Copenhagen Frayn is arguably best known for his farce, Noises Off, and for his novel, Spies. He has also worked as a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and translator of the works of Anton Chekhov.
Awards and nominations
Awards
- Drama Desk Award for Best New Play
- Evening Standard Award for Best Play
- New York Drama Critics' Circle Best Play
- Tony Award for Best Play
- Prix Molière
See also
External links
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